by Will Hobbs
“The therapist you see now, is it the same one or different?”
“Different guy. He keeps asking me where my anger comes from, and I’m like, ‘Duh…. ’ It’s a farce, Shannon. I can’t just come out and tell him what he wants to know.”
“Which is…?”
“Which is what it was like when I—you know, the dog, the whole thing about the dog. Why I did it, what I was feeling, what was behind it. If I talked about the big picture, it would get back somehow to my father, and my mother and I would have to pay.”
His words hung in the air for a while. I didn’t know how much more of this I wanted to hear. I wasn’t sure I should get more involved than I already was, and this was the moment to back off.
The thing is, it was obvious how badly he needed someone to talk to. Hoping for the best, I kept going. “You can tell me,” I said. “You should get it out, Tyler. It won’t get back to him, don’t worry about that.”
He looked at me desperately.
“Really,” I said. “You should tell me.”
“Okay, then. Every time it happened—when I’d take out my rage, as the therapist calls it—the tension had been building up at home to where I just couldn’t take it.”
“It wasn’t only that one time, with that one dog?”
“That one dog, but not that one time. The dog and I went way back. Six months, anyway. That creature would always come back, like my shadow or something. Unclipped, medium-sized poodle, leaves and junk hanging off it, fur in its eyes, disgustingly slinky, ’fraidy-cat kind of dog. Always cringing like you were about to hit it. Obviously it had been hit before, somewhere else. It was a stray. It always came around to our place because my mom would feed it.”
“You talk like it gave you the creeps.”
“It did. It was one of those smiley dogs. He’d cringe and smile, flop down and show you his belly. It was pathetic how lame he was. I couldn’t stand him, his weakness. I started kicking him, and still he’d come around. Hit him with things, he’d still come around. The dog accepted it, expected it. Liked me, if you can believe it. Sometimes, after school and before my mom got home, it would be just me and the poodle. My dad would be at the shop, a stone’s throw away. He knew it was going on, didn’t care. He thought the dog was pathetic too. He was amused that it made me so crazy.”
“Why do you think it did?”
“Oh, I’ve had some time to think about that. It’s all mixed up with the stuff my dad would say to me, how lame I was, how weak I was. When my mother isn’t around, my dad lays it on especially thick. I’d stalk off—him yelling things at me. I’d go down to the creek, and wouldn’t you know that poodle would follow me. I’d turn around and whack the dog. It’d cringe, take another whack. Just like me. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I better just hit the road, but I never did.”
“How come?”
“ ’Cuz of what I knew that would do to my mother. I’m all she’s got. I leave, it would just be her and him. Scary thought. That last time at the creek…”
He stopped, his face all contorted.
“Go ahead and tell me, Tyler.”
“I was so messed up—head buzzing, everything white-hot—I couldn’t see straight. I picked up a long smooth stick, maybe a walking stick somebody had dropped. It was really stout. The poodle was smiling, cringing, the usual…I just lost it, came down on him hard, broke his back.”
I winced. I couldn’t look Tyler in the face. “That’s awful,” was all I managed to say.
“It got worse. Now the creature’s in unbelievable agony, but he’s not dead. Crying at the top of his lungs.”
“I heard a raccoon in pain like that this summer. I’ll never forget it.”
“Now what do I do? I panicked. I shoved him into the creek, waded after him, pushed him down with the stick until he drowned. There, I said it. Now you think I’m a monster.”
Dead silence made the air so heavy I could barely breathe. “I don’t,” I said finally. “I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you did it, that you have to live with it, but I don’t think that’s who you are or who you want to be. I can see how hard you’re trying to be different from your father.”
He looked me in the eye. “That’s it, Shannon. I really don’t want to be like him. He’s just so cruel, that’s all I can call it. Every so often he can’t control his temper at all. We had a dog when I was little, a puppy. I watched him club it to death. All it did was chew up something of his. Like father, like son, right? All I know is, it’s up to me. I have to get better on my own. That’s what I’ve decided. This summer, at the center, it’s the first time I ever felt like I had a chance.”
At last I was able to look him in the eye without looking away. “I can tell that you’re getting better, Tyler. If you ask me, it’s obvious.”
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s not going to work, though.”
“Why not?”
“My father notices everything. He knows I’m getting better too, and the weird thing is, he doesn’t want me to.”
“Are you sure? Sure you aren’t being too hard on him?”
Tyler was fighting tears. “I wish. The truth is, my dad wants to drag me down with him, be like him. There’s no fairy tale ending here, Shannon. My father is like a volcano, only he doesn’t wait a thousand years between blowups. Three more years sounds like eternity.”
“Just hang in there,” I encouraged him. “And tell somebody if it’s getting too bad. Maybe Jackie…”
“That’s the last thing she needs.”
“Your therapist, then.”
Tyler’s break was over. He had to get back to meet up with Neal. As we climbed down from the talking stump he said, “When you go back to New Jersey, at least I’ll still have Liberty to talk to. Don’t worry, Shannon, I’ll hang in there.”
Sometimes Tyler and Neal worked with Liberty together, and this was one of those days. I watched from the bench just outside the pen. The way it worked, Liberty would walk off her perch onto Neal’s arm, and he’d talk to her and walk around with her on his arm, then let her step back onto her perch. Then she’d do the same with Tyler. Only with Tyler, for a long time she’d lean away from him, like, I don’t really want to be doing this, but if Neal thinks I have to, I will.
This was the day Liberty actually perched upright on Tyler’s arm. Go, Tyler! I thought, but I didn’t want to say anything too embarrassing.
When I saw Tyler the next day he was fresh from another session with the eagle. He told me that Liberty had even leaned toward him a little, like she did with Neal. Liberty actually looked him in the eye, for a long time. Tyler was pumped. “Shannon, you wouldn’t believe what it’s like with that huge bird on your arm. I mean, you have to hold your arm out perfectly straight. It helps if you dig your elbow into your side. You take a walk around the whole rehab path with her, a couple hundred yards, and you wonder how long you’ll be able to hold out. And I mean, I’m strong. It’ll be awesome when her tail feathers and the feathers on her head turn white. That will be something to see.”
What made the best watching was when Liberty started walking from Neal’s arm onto Tyler’s and back. Liberty thought that was a pretty good trick, and so did the guys. They were also getting her used to her jesses, the leather straps around her feet. With jesses she could be leashed to her handler or to a perch. It was part of what she would need to become a bird Jackie could show at her programs. Jackie usually took her favorite red-tailed hawk, but she could take them both, and the bald eagle would be even more impressive. Jackie was talking about Tyler handling the eagle for school programs and so on. When the time came, his father would get behind the idea, she was fairly sure.
“In my dreams,” Tyler said.
19
CRY TIDNAB
Our raven was back from the vet. Among all the noisy birds inside the clinic, he didn’t have a thing to say. Cody spent a lot of time with him, talking to him, trying to get him to talk back. “He’s my Liberty,” my br
other whispered in my ear. The raven’s stump was healing into a hard, leathery knot, and the bird began to put weight on it. Cody gave him a name, Kickstand, for the way he leaned. The name was an instant hit with the volunteers. We wondered if Kickstand would stand a chance in the wild with only one foot. Jackie didn’t know. “We’ll give him the chance,” she said.
When the time came, Cody was given the honor of moving Kickstand to the flying pen next to Liberty’s. I went along to watch. Cody set the carrier down in the middle of the enclosure, undid the latch, and ceremoniously swung the carrier door open.
At just that moment a gust of wind came up, and it opened another door, the one to the flying pen.
One hop and Kickstand was airborne. With an agile twist of his wings, one up and one down, the raven flew through sideways as the door was swinging shut. He’d nearly been clipped, but he was free and gaining altitude. “Oh no,” Cody cried. “Kickstand, come back!”
Kickstand hadn’t flown far. He was high in a cedar looking down on us. Cr-r-ruck, he called. Prruk! Prruk! Tok! Kla-wock!
“Wow, Cody,” I said. “Your friend suddenly has a lot to say.”
Cody’s head was craned way back. It was like his eyes were never going to leave that bird. “Look how he’s leaning on that branch with his stump, Shannie. Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“Looks to me like he doesn’t need any more rehab.”
“Do you think he’ll stick around?”
“I guess you better say good-bye. He might fly away any second.”
Cody didn’t say good-bye, and as it turned out, Kickstand didn’t fly away.
The raven had to invent a new way to make landings, and it was awkward at first. He’d grasp a branch with the talons of his good foot and lean on his stump, all the while beating his wings for balance.
In a day or two Kickstand’s landings were almost smooth, yet he was still hanging around the center, maybe because Cody was feeding him, not to mention all the stealing he did from the deer and the coyotes, the ducks and geese, the sea otter, the raccoons, the possums, and the skunks. Kickstand was a glutton, and he also had a mischievous streak. The raven especially enjoyed dropping small rocks through the roof mesh onto the mountain lion’s head.
Neal said that ravens have about fifty different calls, but Kickstand seemed to have a hundred. He could even bark like a dog. He made the most wonderful gurgling and popping sounds, but most often would sit high in a cedar and go tok-tok-tok.
Out on the driveway in the front of the office, Kickstand enjoyed messing with the golden retrievers. The raven would play wounded, then fly away at the last second when the dogs rushed him. Sage, as I might have guessed, declined to participate.
One day Kickstand stole the keys to the ambulance off the porch railing where Neal had set them. With the keys in his bill, the raven flew straight as an arrow over Jackie’s house, circled once, then came in low and dropped them down her chimney. After circling one more time, croaking loudly, he landed on the chimney and laughed his shaggy-throated head off.
Amazingly, Kickstand would come to Cody. My brother soon had the big bird eating out of his hand, perching on his arm, roosting on his shoulder. This was a new one for Jackie. The volunteers were taking pictures. Kickstand taught Cody how to talk raven, or at least that’s what Cody claimed. The two of them would go to opposite ends of the center, a couple hundred yards apart, and carry on a so-called conversation. Cody told me he’d learned a few “dangerous things” from the raven.
“Like what?” I challenged him.
“Sure you want to know?”
“Try me.”
“Well, for one thing, this land Jackie built on used to be the core of a volcano bigger than Rainier.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“I’m serious, Shan. There’s still a lot of power here. The whole place could explode at any moment.”
“Is that so,” I said. “Any telling when?”
“No, but there’s one place where the energy is more powerful than anywhere else.”
“And where’s that?”
“In the middle of Sasha’s pen.”
“Really?”
“Kickstand told me that if you go into the lion’s pen and hold your hands above your shoulders…your head will explode.”
That last part he’d said in a hush. “I guess I won’t try it,” I said. “Seems to me, before you could lift your hands above your head, that cougar would rip your lungs out.”
“You’re dead meat either way,” Cody said. “Promise you won’t try it.”
“Alrighty then,” I said. “I guess I won’t.”
A baby raccoon went missing inside the clinic. As Rosie was transferring a batch of them into a carrier so their cage could be cleaned, it squirmed out of her hands and was off to the races.
Rosie almost had it a couple of times, but then the baby raccoon hid, maybe among the little animal houses stacked everywhere, possibly under or behind the washer and dryer or one of the refrigerators. It could have been in any of a thousand places. For a while we all got on our hands and knees, Jackie, half a dozen volunteers, and Cody and me, but the little bandit was lying low.
“This is a job for Sage,” Cody announced when we were all thoroughly frustrated. “Sage could find that raccoon in a minute.”
Jackie shook her head. “No way,” she said. “Think of all the different smells in here, Cody. With hundreds of birds and mammals, including all those other raccoons, even Sage couldn’t find it.”
“Bet ya,” he said. He was getting that impossible-to-deal-with look.
I sided with Jackie. “Sage is amazing, but not that amazing.”
Now it was the hurt look. “I can’t believe you just said that, Shannie. You’re the one she’s working with now on the rescues!”
Jackie, Rosie, and the volunteers were enjoying this. I looked from them back to the kid. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll get Sage.”
Sage wondered what was up when I called her into the clinic. The retrievers followed, hoping the invitation applied to them. “Sorry,” I had to tell them. They went back to the shade on the office porch.
“Here she is, Cody. Now how is this supposed to work?”
“I got an idea. You follow me, and Sage will follow you.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll see.”
I followed Cody over to the baby raccoons’ cage, the one that hadn’t been cleaned yet. So did Jackie and the volunteers. This was a welcome break from the endless cleaning and feeding and preparing of medications.
The cage was ripe with the smells of fur and food and baby raccoon droppings. Cody grabbed it and set it down on the floor next to Sage, who was looking around but mostly at me, as if I might give her a clue what this was all about.
“I get to say it,” Cody declared.
“Say what?”
He stood up and whispered in my ear, “What if all these people hear the code word for raccoon?”
“I think that’s okay, Cody. We’ll make them swear on a stack of Bibles never to say it.”
“Well, I guess that’s okay.”
My little brother got down on the floor next to Sage, and then he reached into the cage and collected droppings and bits of fur. He passed a handful back and forth between him and the border collie’s nose, and then he shouted, “Tidnab, Sage, tidnab!”
Sage’s ears went straight up, and she looked from Cody to me, and me back to Cody. From her nose to the tip of her tail, Sage was suddenly a live wire. She looked doubtfully at Cody, as if it couldn’t be true that he knew the code word. She hesitated.
Cody held the handful under his own nose and sniffed. “Tidnab!” Cody shouted. “Tidnab, Sage!”
With that, Sage shot through my legs and into the laundry room, then into the food prep room, then into the baby mammals room, and finally to the baby birds room, all in less than a minute. When we caught up with her she was dancing on the linoleum under the starlings and the crows.
By now Rosie and Jackie and all the volunteers had arrived. Sage was dancing and whining and looking up, up above the stacks of bird condos, toward some shelves stacked with spare bird cages and cardboard boxes and who knows what.
“I already looked up there,” Jackie said.
Cody shook his head dramatically. “That raccoon’s up there, I guarantee it.”
Jackie was amused. “Would you like to place a bet of some kind on this, Cody?”
“I sure would. You win, I do the dishes tonight. I win, I get the Swedish meatballs Shannie put away in the refrigerator last night.”
Swedish meatballs? It was news to me that Cody liked meatballs. The reason we had leftovers was because he hadn’t eaten any.
By this time one of the volunteers had fetched the stepladder. Sage was still in the alert position, eyes like laser beams on a spot directly above.
Cody raced up the ladder, peeked behind an old Radio Shack box, then looked down at us like the cat that’s eaten the canary. “Gloves, please.”
Half a minute later he was on his way down the stepladder, baby raccoon in hand.
Just then a very big, red-faced man in overalls more or less burst through the clinic door. “Where’s Tyler?” he demanded.
“Hi, Gary,” Jackie said.
A hush descended over the clinic. Tyler’s dad glared at the baby raccoon squirming in Cody’s hands, at Sage, at me, at Jackie.
“He’s out back,” Jackie said. “Working with a bald eagle. You should see them.”
“Take me to him,” Mr. Tucker said gruffly.
I followed, hanging well back. Tyler’s father didn’t even look at the animals as he followed Jackie through the clinic. He kept his eyes straight ahead.
Outside, he started looking around, surprised maybe at the scale of it all. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d never been there before. He stopped for a second and took a long look at the plywood fence hiding the bears’ den. Then I remembered that Tyler had been telling him about the cubs.
Three steps behind Jackie, Tyler’s dad stalked the path that led through the owls, the falcons, and the hawks, and on to the eagles. The last of the eagle enclosures, where Jackie halted, was Liberty’s. The heavy tread of Mr. Tucker’s boots on the gravel path went silent. He stood there with his hands on his hips.
